“We share the frustration. We understand the pain,” mentioned Jason Straziuso, a spokesman for the Crimson Cross. “We’re not bulletproof, and it’s not possible for us to walk into a conflict zone in hostile territory without permission — to walk up to a group of people, most certainly holding guns that they will use, and demand that they let us inside. It’s not possible.”
The Crimson Cross has about 130 workers in Gaza, he mentioned, giving it some means to ship humanitarian assist and to go to the scenes of destruction from the battle. However even with that entry, assembly with the hostages requires an settlement with Hamas.
Mr. Straziuso mentioned Crimson Cross officers have been speaking to Hamas, Israel, america and different nations in regards to the situation of the hostages.
However these talks have been shrouded in secrecy.
In a press release on Monday, the Crimson Cross mentioned the group is “insisting that our teams be allowed to visit the hostages to check on their welfare,” however added that “the I.C.R.C. does not take part in negotiations leading to the release of hostages. As a neutral humanitarian intermediary, we remain ready to facilitate any future release that the parties to the conflict agree to.”
Separate discussions a couple of doable launch of some hostages are being performed by means of intermediaries, with Israel and america speaking with Hamas solely by the use of messages handed backwards and forwards by negotiators in Egypt and Qatar.
A frontrunner of Hamas mentioned in October that not the entire Israeli hostages who have been taken to Gaza have been being held by the group, a declare that most certainly complicates negotiations for his or her launch. Osama Hamdan, a member of Hamas’s political bureau in Lebanon, mentioned different teams, together with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a separate group that’s an ally of Hamas, have been additionally holding among the hostages.
In late October, Israeli forces rescued one hostage, and four others were released by Hamas a couple of week earlier. However there have been no additional breakthroughs.
Warring nations have blocked the Crimson Cross from visiting hostages or prisoners of battle in earlier conflicts. In 2022, eight months into the battle between Ukraine and Russia, the Crimson Cross nonetheless had little entry to prisoners held by both aspect. In a press release on the time, the group wrote that “blaming the I.C.R.C. for being denied full and immediate access does not help prisoners of war or their families.”
However the truth that there isn’t any definitive playbook within the case of hostages throughout wartime, no precise timing for reporting about whether or not they’re lifeless or alive leaves the members of the family with little to carry on to as the times slowly go.
Liz Hirsh Naftali, the great-aunt of Abigail Idan, recounted on NBC Information how the 3-year-old Abigail watched on Oct. 7 as Hamas fighters shot and killed her mom and ran along with her father and two siblings.
“Abigail was in her father’s arms,” Ms. Naftali mentioned on “NBC Nightly News” with Lester Holt. “And as they ran, a terrorist shot him and killed him, and he fell onto Abigail.”
She added, “We learned that Abigail actually had crawled out from under her father’s body and, full of his blood, went to a neighbor, and they took her in.”
Hamas later seized the neighbor, her three kids and Abigail, Ms. Naftali mentioned.
Rachel Goldberg, who’s married to Mr. Polin, and different members of the family have mentioned they don’t know when — or whether or not — they are going to uncover something definitive about their family members. Ms. Goldberg detailed the grief of a mom who has no concept if her son is alive “or if you died yesterday, or if you died five minutes ago.”
(In 2004, earlier than transferring to Israel, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg’s son Hersch attended the identical preschool as my kids in Richmond, Va.)
Inside Israel, the place the faces of the hostages are plastered in every single place on posters that proclaim them “KIDNAPPED,” activists have mounted an aggressive marketing campaign to demand swifter motion from the Crimson Cross.
